The FLAPPS
project investigated the use of a toolkit approach to building peer
networks for various purposes. The FLAPPS toolkit eases the
development of overlay peer networks by treating the problem of
communcations among peers as an issue of routing. Thus, the
toolkit assists in the building of peer topologies, running
routing protocols among the peers, and forwarding messages from peer to
peer in a manner suited for the particular needs of individual peer
networks. Since any given peer network may have its own special
requirements in any of these areas, FLAPPS allows customization of
topology construction, routing protocols and forwarding behaviors.

Peer
networks open new possibilities for DDoS attacks, particularly since
each message sent in such a network typically requires much more
handling than a simple IP packet. Thus, participation in a peer
network gives attackers a mechanism to amplify the effects of every
attack packet they send to a machine. FLAPPS can be used to
counteract this effect. It can spread traffic through the entire
peer network, filter traffic, validate the source of the traffic,
construct topologies less susceptible to DDoS attack, and use routing
protocol features to speed recovery from attacks.